The Colfax chronicle. [volume] (Colfax, Grant Parish, La.) 1877-1981, 1887-04-16
QUEER OCCUPATIONS.
The Peculiar Ways In Which Some Me-
Workers Make Good Living.

The Peculiar Ways In Which Some New
Workers Make Good Living.
New York has not attained the unique
distinction recently boosted by Paris OF
maintaining beggar factory for MAIN.
ing little children, so as to render them
objects of pity. Neither has it yet
reached up to London in the possession
of necessary stores" wherein every
earthly thing in use by man is kept on
sale. There is an audacious Teuton
near Chatham Square who keeps hand
organs in mischief by repairing them.
He assumes to replenish them with new
tunes, but, of course, that is a fiction,
for no hand-organ was ever heard to
play any but bald-headed and middle
aged music.
Two courageous New Workers follow
the useful but unpoetic business Of
hanging their fellow-citizens. They
are not prejudiced in favor of New
Workers., but are easily persuaded to
hang men elsewhere throughout the
Union. 1t is always pretended that no
one knows their names and that only
the sheriff of this county has their ad-
dresses. One is a Hebrew, dubbed
'Isaacs," and the other is German,
called "Minzesheimer;" but the city
always Jumps them both under the one
name of Joseph B. Atkinson, and under
that name they draw their pay. They
rig the gallows and finally cut the rope.
Four prosperous citizens earn their
iivelihoods as doctors for the lap-dogs
of rich women. As a rule the only
medicine they use is starvation. They
fling the dear pets into barred boxes
and deprive them of food for four days,
having found out that the usual trouble
with pet dogs is that they are fed ex-
travagantly and improperly. just east
of the Bowery in a tenement house re-
sides a man whose business is to rent
himself and his Punch and Judy show
to children's parties in the brown-stone
wards. A person on the Bowery keeps
six or eight girls busy framing wreaths
and pictures of tombstones, whereon
are set forth the virtues Of deceased
New Workers. He follows where the
death notices in the papers lead him
and works upon the feelings of the grief
stricken families.
Another man is making fortune by
carrying off all the waste and refuse the
city will not remove, such as builders
leavings, dirt from cellar diggings and
so on. The builders pay him to take it,
and then he sells it in the suburbs for
filling in sunken lands.
Only one man in town pretends to
keep photographs of all the notable
persons in the world. There is not
room for two in the business. Another
citizen sells to public men and corpora
tons clippings from all the newspapers
that mention them, at five cents clip
ping added to subscription fee each
year.
Yet another citizen hunts up coats-of-
arms and pedigrees for all who think
theirs have been overlooked, or that
they may get them from families of the
same, or nearly the same, names as
their own. This is quite English and
therefore popular. 1t is said that the
carriage-makers are giving away coats
of-arms like chromos.
The trade in painting black eyes with
a mixture of six parts white paint and
one part red, now boasts several estab-
lishments. 1t is not popularizing the
black eye, because it only covers up the
scandal without producing forgetful.
ness.
One New Yorker has posted himself
about all the unclaimed estates in
Christendom, and thus profits by
weakness more general than most folks
imagine.
Another New Yorker searches the
streets at night with lantern for
coins and purses dropped during the
evening.
A woman near the City Hall takes
care of the babies whose widowed
mothers have to go out to work, and
who check them, like umbrellas, in the
morning and call for them in the even
ing. Many women in the East Side
tcnements take care of baby or two
for their neighbors, but this downtown
one is, think, the only regular safe
baby safe deposit company or storage
warehouse in town.
There is no matrimonial agency or
husbands exchange newspaper here
just now. There have been many, but
all have failed. That scheme is not as
profitable as that of man met the
other day, who told me he trained valu-
able dogs to come straight back to him
as often as he sold them.-JuIian Ralph,
IN Philadelphia Press.
DECORATIVE ART.